


Talon Tomorrow

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, Teen Titans (Comics)
Genre: F/M, Psychological Drama, Teen Titans vol. 3, Titans Tomorrow, also a canon ship, dark future, fluffy codependent villains, mention of eye trauma, reference to Earth-3, technically this is a canon AU, writing fic about things you can't believe are canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-01-05
Packaged: 2018-05-12 01:27:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5648746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world ruled by mad Titans, where <em>hero</em> and <em>villain</em> are no longer words that mean anything at all, the Joker and her boyfriend are still fighting Batman for the fun of it.</p><p>It's kind of nice how some things never change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Talon Tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

> This fic not affiliated with my Earth-3 setting. Also I should probably apologize for the title, but some things are just meant to be.

Talon makes sure the blood has mostly stopped, then picks up his partner and runs.

He knows these rooftops well, by this time. They’re a long way from identical to the Gotham roofs he _used_ to know, but the two of them have been in this world for ten years, now, and this city for seven. Long enough to learn the lay of the land.

It isn’t bad, the life he’s living. He firmly believes that. There’s a lot of scope for his talents, and no one telling him what to do, and he has Duela.

There is, admittedly, a man with his face wearing a mask that is obviously devouring his soul, while he tries to conquer the world. And Duela has long since shattered into sharp fragments of her old mirrored selves and seems to reflect little, anymore, besides her father’s creepy evil twin—Jokester would cry, if he could see. Obviously, he was right about bad influences, except Talon is fairly certain it was less because of _him_ than this universe they’d stupidly settled down in. He should have killed the old Joker first time he got a chance. Not that it would have helped; wherever Duela gets the patterns she mirrors, it isn’t from the solid world in front of her. At first glance, she just seems crazy, but he’s known her long enough to know she’s tapping into something deeper, some other layer of reality maybe. In the old days, she was always forgetting what universe she was actually in, moment to moment. But she’s rarely ever made anything up.

(She’s one of the only people Raven’s mind-warping magic can’t affect. Talon suspects that’s why Batman and the other dupes started cracking down on them, even before Duela had gone all that far off the rails.)

But it doesn’t matter.

If Jokester had been willing to accept his daughter’s choice, Talon would have fought for him, just as well as he always had for Owlman. Why not? It was something to do either way. But he’d refused them his blessing, not crazy enough to flex that far, and they ran off, and now it’s been more than a decade since. The old comedian never had his daughter's knack for slipping between the moments into what she only ever called _other places,_ and even if he's alive back in their old world he’ll probably never meet the new Joker. Talon doesn’t care. His partner might, if she ever remembers her Daddy existed.

“Tim,” Duela hums, nudging her nose against his shoulder. “Tim-Tim-Timmy-Tim.”

No one has called him by his given name in a very long time, except for her. And she uses it on the other one, too, almost as often as his title or any of the nicknames. Sometimes he isn’t sure she knows the difference—but most of the time she does. And it’s fine. Either way, it’s fine. It’s not as if Batman would ever kiss her back.

“Just a little further,” he murmurs. “We’ll get you all patched up to fight another day.”

She nods, smearing white facepaint on his cape, and chortles a little when she notices. “Tomorrow,” she confides happily, and then laughs harder, jerking in his arms.

Talon doubts it. Batman put a bullet in her thigh—he was aiming for the gut, but she moved. The Bat’s getting nastier. His double is _possibly_ not over the time they dressed Talon up in a Batsuit and were conspicuously affectionate all over town.

He knows his alternate is intelligent, that both of them are. Very intelligent. They also, he knows, have very little imagination. Even less than Owlman or Batman, he’s pretty sure, and Owlman was so _boring—_ he joined up with him as a kid because it was something to do, something new and different and interesting that his parents would never approve of, but they never noticed him except to _be_ disapproving, so who cared. He joined because it was interesting, but after the first few years it was just another routine. Violence here, threat there, scheme versus scheme…Luthor made a decent mental sparring partner, but Talon almost never got to go up against him; he was only a henchman, after all.

He could have schemed for advancement, but that was boring too, and even if he had killed Thomas and become the new (shorter) Owlman, that would have been the most boring thing possible. Hadn’t he gone out of his way to _avoid_ taking over his father’s company?

The only fun part was Jokester, really. And then Duela.

He’s glad he ran away with her, whatever else.

“Tomorrow,” he agrees.

Duela giggles again, and reaches up to run her fingers back and forth across his lips. He smiles at her, and sticks out his tongue a little, poking her. She almost lets out a happy little scream of laughter, but clamps her hand over her mouth in time. They’re escaping, after all. Have to be sneaky.

“I always know I can count on you,” she pulls her hand away enough to whisper.

She can.

“You should clean your knife,” he suggests. It’s still got vitreous humor on it from the eye she yanked it out of before Batman arrived. She laughs at him—he does most of the cleaning and laundry that gets done; he’s much better at staying task-oriented—but she gets it out and starts polishing it on her skirt. Talon lands from his next jump smoothly enough the blade doesn’t even jolt between her fingers.

The Batsignal blinks on—not the old one they say the police used to light, to summon the vigilante or just remind people they _could_. This one shines up from the summit of Wayne Tower with the fire of several hundred thousand watts, and it’s a warning, and a warning only. It means the Bat’s out hunting, and if you don’t have the stomach to meet him, stay inside.

(He’s not exactly a vigilante, anymore. Technically, he’s the _government._ Head of Titans West. The police report to him. It’s more than Owlman and his allies _ever_ managed. You have to respect that.)

If you watch closely, you can see a small dark shape leave the roof of the tower, sailing out into the smog layer and just cutting across the fuzzy outer edge of the glowing blazon. If they aren’t under cover soon, he’ll catch up with them. Talon appreciates the warning, picks up his pace.

They were Titans once, too. For a little while. (And it was fun; Duela laughed a lot then, when they first came to this world, and Talon should have tried the do-gooder thing earlier. New challenges. He thinks they made pretty good heroes. Duela had practice, even if she didn't always know it.) But neither side will have them now—Titans East with their morals and Titans West with their sense of order, like the old concept of superhero fractured down the middle, like everything in this world.

Everything but Talon.

 _Ah, Tim,_ Talon thinks, smiling a little because if he hadn’t had his sense of humor he’d have gone crazy a long time ago, long before he gave up on Owlman. _You used to be the good one. I wonder if you think you still are?_

The Timothy Drake who is not Batman kisses his Joker on the forehead, drops into an alley where the searchlights will not fall, and blends once more into the shadows.

**Author's Note:**

> Did I mention this is technically within canon? Canon from 2005, specifically. In the _Titans Tomorrow_ storyline, adult Duela Dent was the new Joker, up against Tim Drake’s Batman-With-Extreme-Prejudice-And-Also-Guns. Right? Soon thereafter, in _52_ , Jokester’s Daughter Duela Dent (who had taken over existing from all other iterations) and her boyfriend Talon Tim Drake ran away from the new Earth-3 after Jokester refused to support their relationship, and briefly joined the Teen Titans.
> 
> Shortly _there_ after, the Titans of Tomorrow turned out to still exist—and in that version of the bad timeline, assuming Duela still became Tim’s Joker, she would now have had a boyfriend who was _physically identical to her Batman._ o_o
> 
> ...so I needed to depict that.


End file.
